“I always do my watchmaking for two and a half hours at this time. At eight, I indulge in an hour’s reading of a book. Then I spend fifteen minutes on evening personal hygiene. It follows that at 10:15, we will see each other in bed.”
Here we go again! I’m about to push a pie in his face, I swear!
“Jan, it doesn’t work like that. Either you change your awesome plans and spend this evening with me, or I’m taking an Uber home and the only thing you’ll see in bed will be yourreflection in the mirror.” Because, of course, the closet in the bedroom is identical to the one in the apartment.
Jan looks at me, confused.
“Do you want to go home?”
“It’s up to you. What are you going to do tomorrow?”
“The usual on a day off.”
Oh dear, we’ve already been through this, no kidding.
“And where is there room for me in all this?”
“I scheduled time for us to have morning sex, breakfast together, lunch, dinner, and evening sex.”
Oh, I am utterly flattered to be the source of satisfying His Lordship’s two basic physiological needs. But, where the hell are the others?
“It doesn’t make sense, Jan. I can’t do it like that.” I shake my head, feeling that my hands are already numb from holding the plates of apple pie. It’s getting to me that my coming here was a mistake. “I understand that you like to have everything arranged and under control, but I can’t live like this. If you want to spend the next few days together with me, we have to compromise.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“We will split the days. I take today’s, you take tomorrow’s, the day after tomorrow is mine, and the day after tomorrow is yours, and so on until the New Year. I decide what we do on ‘my day’ and you decide what we do during ‘your day’. There is only one rule: we both have to be agreeable on a day that is not ours.”
“Meaning?”
“On ‘my days’ when I say, ‘Jan, let’s go for a walk, shall we?’, you will answer, ‘Yes, Maria.’ On ‘your days’ when you say, ‘Maria, I’m going to go sit in the study for an hour, okay?’ then I’ll answer, ‘Sure, Jan.’ Of course, everything must be within reason. We can’t force the other person to do things that will somehow harm them or go against their values.”
He looks at me with wide-open eyes. If I hadn’t known him, I would have thought he was terrified.
“What if I don’t agree to such an arrangement?”
“Then nothing will change in your life. I’ll just pack up, we’ll say goodbye amicably, I’ll go home today, and you’ll spend the next few days off the way you usually do: alone, according to the established order and without unnecessary surprises.”
He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and exhales. I can see from him that he is fighting an inner battle. My heart starts beating faster because I know that it’s over between us if he doesn’t accept my proposal. Will I be sorry if he refuses? Yes. Did I overreact by giving him an ultimatum? No. Because even if I’ve already started to feel something for him, I’m not suited for a relationship ruled by a predetermined schedule. It’s not my world. So, either we’ll get along and each of us will find something for ourselves in this relationship, or there’s no point in dragging it out.
“I agree.” The answer finally comes, and I breathe a sigh of relief. “Am I to understand that you decide what we do on December twenty-fifth, twenty-seventh, twenty-ninth and thirty-first, and I decide what we do on December twenty-sixth, twenty-eighth, and thirty and January first?”
“That’s right.”
“So what is your plan for today?”
“Very simple.” I smile. “My plan is to have no plan.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We do what I feel like doing at any given time. And now I feel like eating the damn pie already because my hands are about to fall off. Let’s go to the kitchen, shall we, Jan?” I look at him suggestively.
He sighs and rises from his chair.
“Yes, Maria.”
Hee-hee-hee. And that’s how it’s done.
I leave his office allhappy.